Punk's not dead, pal!

A short-lived but notorious chapter in rock history from the 1970s, which had differing results in the USA and the UK, but which still casts its shadow from time to time, and proves a source of fascination. That American punks were acts like the Ramones and the New York Dolls, whilst British punks were the Sex Pistols and the Clash shows how wide was the barriers of what went in. Though many acts since have tried to copy or homage the originals, they're not really the same. Here are a few sample cuts:

The Ramones - Beat On The Brat (live)

New York Dolls - Personality Crisis (live)

Sex Pistols - Holidays In The Sun (live)

The Clash - Complete Control (live)

The Damned - New Rose

We Who Wait: The Adverts and TV Smith
Part of a season of docs on punk rockers, this covered the brief rise & fall of the Adverts, followed by Smith's wilderness years in the 1980's, before a reformation as a solo live act, where he now seems relatively happy.

Arena: Who is Poly Styrene?
Rather quirky doc from 1979 focusing on the lead singer of X-Ray Spex, who sadly died in 2011. Poly herself seemed rather too ordinary & dull, so the interest came from looking at a forgotten world (such as her visit to the EMI factory and being a guest on 'Radio EMI').

Punk Britannia
Major 3-part documentary partly coinciding with the fuss of the Jubilee. The first edition, Pre-Punk covered the seeds of what became Punk, chiefly the Pub Rock scene, which was quite interesting and informative. The 2nd part on Punk's boom itself was less satisfying as the topic has been mined quite extensively, and there was a certain bias to suggest that John Lydon was the driving spirit, which may be true, but Paul Weller was just as significant a creative force. The final bit, Post-Punk, tried to follow the picture into the next years, but got rather tangled in the various genres, New Wave, Two-Tone etc. Though it was good to see acts like Wire and Gang of Four getting their due, there was still rather a lot of Lydon (thru Public Image Ltd) and the political reflection was amateurish in the extreme. Nevertheless, an impressive piece of work.

Never Mind The Baubles: Christmas '77 with the Sex Pistols
Idiosyncratic telling of their final UK gigs, in Huddersfield. One on the afternoon of Christmas Day, to a children's party, which they financed, and in the evening to a more grown-up crowd. They were supporting firefighters who were on strike. John Lydon, Steve Jones and Paul Cook all seemed to remember the day with great fondness, and fans who were at both shows were even more rapt at the mad memories.

In Conversation: Julien Temple
His many films & docs on the Sex Pistols were considered, along with his Dr Feelgood tribute, and one on Joe Strummer. He's working on one about the music of Rio, following on from his work on London for the 2012 Olympics. Should be worth seeing.

There'll Always Be An England
The Sex Pistols at the Brixon Academy in 2007, film directed by Julien Temple. Lydon endearingly forgot the words once or twice, but the crowd were ecstatic from start to finish. Can't argue.

Anarchy In Manchester
A 6-part series compiled of footage from late 70s series "So It Goes", fronted by the late impresario Tony Wilson, and showcasing acts like the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Jam, the Tom Robinson Band, Elvis Costello and narrator John Cooper Clarke. Obviously hit & miss, but a great project all the same.

Ramones: The True Story
As told by Tommy Ramone, their tour manager, art director, and the guy who owned CBGBs. It's possible they were more Punks than the UK guys, but really it's two different approaches to two destinations, but the same principles. No severe haircuts here, though.

The Sex Pistols: Rock Case Studies
Glen Matlock was of course the most useful contributor, but John Robb had enthusiasm to spare, and Alex Ogg was welcome, too. Though their cultural impact was enormous, it was hard to unravel how McLaren clearly lost interest once he'd made his punk statements. The ill-fated US tour seemed a ragged way to bring it all to a halt.

Sid!
Over an hour and a half of dissecting the Sid Vicious myth. Quelle surprise, he wasn't a moron at all, and quite a sex symbol and punk rock figurehead. Yeah yeah. Those who didn't rate him, such as Marco Pirroni, at least balanced out the Caroline Coons and Viv Albertines who lost a friend they knew and loved. But I was not convinced by their adulation in the slightest.

Rock Milestones - The Essential Music of the Last Century - Ramones
Well, they were different punks in the USA, something Malcolm McLaren seemed never to appreciate. It seems amusing to me that their biggest success was getting Phil Spector involved and covering an old Ronettes number.

More Bollocks - Raw Punk Vol 1
A lengthy compilation notable for the dregs on display. When Sham 69 and the Anti-Nowhere League are about as famous as it gets, things must be bad. Still, this meant some very lesser lights had their spotlight time for once, such as Panacea or Surge.

Even More Bollocks - Raw Punk Vol.2
Another oddball compilation of bands you may never have heard of, with Bad Manners in for star quality (although they're not really punks at all). Rockbitch were probably the most visually interesting act to be included, but there was nothing much to frighten the pigeons anyway.

Piers Morgan's Life Stories: John Lydon
Possibly my least favourite broadcaster ever, at least managed to get decent stuff out of the punk & PiL legend, though he missed a few punches. The audio of Lydon from 1978 slagging off Jimmy Savile at least got this interview on to front pages.

What Do Artists Do All Day? Dennis Morris
Legendary music photographer who made his name with tour photos of Bob Marley, which led him to the attention of John Lydon, and a 24/7 spell with the Sex Pistols which secured his legacy. As well as recounting his own story, he was shown at work with an upcoming punk band, Skinny Girl Diet. He did his best.

Punk '76
With a subtitle "fashion is never wrong", this plodding effort talked to Jon Savage and Jah Wobble, Rat Scabies and Caroline Coon, Dave Vanian and Glen Matlock, with archive chat from Polly Styrene, John Lydon, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Eastwood. The notorious Sex shop around which some of the hype revolved came across almost as a character in its own right. What this all achieved, though, remains up for debate.

Jah Wobble - Riding The Sonic Boom To Heaven
A quirky interview from Conscious.tv with the former punk terror turned musical experimenter who came from a violent past, had troubles with drugs and drink, but had the strength of personality to bring himself back, with help from the AA. He has released multiple albums of his own material, and written his autobiography. Interviewer Iain McNay seemed to really welcome such a forth-right and thoughtful guest.

Artsnight: Lynn Barber meets John Lydon
A half hour interview with an ill Lydon after the end of his latest PiL tour. He was content about being 60, because he felt old at 21. Prefers to forgive his enemies after their deaths. Arguments (in marriage and elsewhere) can be cathartic learning experiences. Feels booze is superior to drugs. Felt Sid Vicious was doomed whether he had been in the Pistols or not. Always a thoughtful and fascinating guy.

Neil McCormick's Needle Time: Jah Wobble
The ever-engaging bass playing former PiL member and long-time leader of the Invaders of the Heart, has his recent "Everything Is No Thing" album to promote, and was happy to recount his story, how he felt about John Lydon and Sid Vicious, how Buddhism and his Chinese wife have been boons to his happiness, how a love for the modal style and pentatonic rhythms mean he can collaborate with musicians from around the world whose language he doesn't speak. Must get round to reading his book sometime too.

The Filth and the Fury
Infamous Julien Temple-directed 2000 documentary in which the surviving Sex Pistols and Malcolm MacLaren discuss the rise and fall of the notorious English punk band who crashed and burned at the behest of a social climate that couldn't handle it, and internal dissension, chiefly between Lydon and MacLaren's differing views on the direction of the band. Whether hindsight or not, this seems quaintly old hat now, though maybe it seemed more revelatory at the time. Temple also makes good use of archive interview footage with the doomed Sid Vicious, and many quirky media clips to illustrate the times.

Son of Sex Pistols manager sets fire to huge, $6.25M collection of punk memorabilia 

the son of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood set fire to an extensive collection of punk memorabilia on a boat in central London.
Joe Corre claimed his collection of clothes, posters and other music-related items was worth $6.25 million.
He watched it go up in flames along with effigies of prominent British politicians loaded with fireworks.

Hmm...

Live With... Jah Wobble
A charming half hour with the Invaders of the Heart, and some vocal help from Aurora Danvers. He opened with the glorious Visions of You, and also had a bash at PiL fave Public Image (for which he concocted the bass part).

SoundStage presents New York Dolls
A gig from Chicago in 2004, which was well received and generally well sung, mixing some new material with the old.

Jah Wobble Redux
Another Cherry Red chat, coinciding with a multi-CD boxset from Wobble's career. He always loved bass, and scorned punk, despite his associations with Lydon and Vicious. The first PiL single, Public Image, still represents the commercial apex of his career. Left the band because of a lack of gigs. Felt punk became a closed world. Went into a dive in the 80s, but resurfaced. The Invaders of the Heart were his own band, his own creation. Visions of You provided them with a hit and a chance to work with Sinead O'Connor, through a friend of a friend. After a spell in Island Records, he formed his own label, and had the freedom to release as much product as he could concoct. The only downside is the world of Brown Boxes that is the fate of tiny labels. I plan to track down his book sometime.

Don Letts Presents... Two Sevens Clash - Dread Meets Punk Rockers
Yet another re-telling of the punk rock story, via the perspective (and film camera) of a Brixton dread who went on to manage and produce the Slits, befriend the Clash, admire the Sex Pistols, and so on. He DJ'd at the Roxy as well, travelled on the White Riot tour, and later with Siouxsie and the Banshees. He met Bob Marley, and went to Jamaica and John Lydon and Richard Branson. He remains an enormous self-publicist, too.

Conspiracy: Drugs, Punk, Pop & Death
A fun little hour from 2015 looking into 4 notorious cases which might have had more to them than is often said. The first was about the time that the Rolling Stones were busted for drugs - was it an FBI plot to stop them getting US visas? It seemed that it backfired and Jagger and Richards were soon off the hook, and the story of Marianne Faithfull's Mars Bar merely enhanced their myth.
Next was the idea that the Sex Pistols were cheated of being #1 during Jubilee week in the summer of 1977. A chap from Radio 1 denied it could have been their work, if it happened. It had the most plausibility on this show.
Next a new one to me, that Eddie and the Hot Rods saw their promising career nosedive because Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page put a black magic curse on them for mocking Aleister Crowley. Unsurprisingly, this got very short shrift, but at least some of the original band are still around and playing "Do Anything You Wanna Do".
Finally, did Jim Morrison die in his Parisian bath-tub, or did he have a misadventure with heroin in a nightclub and get moved to the bath-tub to disguise this fate? It's well-known that there's no way to prove this one as his body was disposed of very quickly, and his girlfriend Pamela was a junkie and unreliable. Might as well argue that aliens got him.

PUNK: attitude
A lengthy effort from Don Letts back in 2005, looking at the evolution of the term and the scene from the US in the 1970s, through the UK version, then back to the US and how it developed into other scenes until grunge. The stand-out point was the lengthy list of talking heads, some predictable inclusions and some predictable omissions (Henry Rollins, who's a great talker, was there a lot, but no John Lydon). The lowpoint came for me when Jello Biafra talked about how the underground scene following punk (Black Flag, Agnostic Front, etc) were motivated to take the impact of Alice Cooper's brand of shock rock, but use it to tackle real topics and not vampires. And I thought he clearly had never listened to any Alice Cooper (like a politician who watches a performance and leaps to the wrong conclusions).

D.O.A.
Seems to be a season of these sorts of things. This one was from 1981, so scored well for verisimilitude. It came from an American perspective on the British scene. So we had lots of footage of the Sex Pistols on their ill-fated American tour, contrasted with the fates of hopeless minor act Terry and the Idiots, whose singer Terry Sylvester was heard out at great length. So was a chap from the Greater London Council, who was comfortable in his sense of superiority over the punks. The other notable interviewees (of a sort) were Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious. He was dead tired, and she was trying to keep him awake for the interview. She seemed more personable than he did, but they were both to be pitied.

Anarchy! The McLaren-Westwood Gang
A lengthy effort from 2015 which thrived on lengthy chats with Malcolm McLaren, and was very much the Gospel according to St Malcolm. His upbringing, which was tricky, was interesting, and his apparent retail supremacy is quite amusing (he stumbles into the lease of a shop - when it becomes a success, he changes it all to try and be a failure, but always fails and has to try and kill off the success). The Sex Pistols were his attempt at subversion, spoilt when the members wanted to be an actual band. But supposedly, Vivienne Westwood recommended Sid Vicious as the original singer, and Malcolm mistook John Lydon for him. Later, he became convinced Vicious would storm the USA, but Sid killed himself. Malcolm turned to new projects, and always maintained a fanbase of disciples. Westwood was a bit player, really.

Neil McCormick's Needle Time: John Lydon
I have seen this, from 2015, so it's remiss that I didn't mention it before. It was around the time of his Anger Is An Energy book, and PiL album What The World Needs Now. He was typically acerbic at times, but also fond and understanding. He embraced the Rotten soubriquet. He talks of both his parents, who inspired songs of his. He defends his odd projects such as wildlife documentaries and butter adverts as sources of necessary income. On balance, he's one of the good guys.

Urban Myths - The Sex Pistols vs. Bill Grundy
Amusing if unoriginal recreation of the infamous teatime telly chat between a garrulous presenter and a raucous new band. Simon Nye's drama perhaps tries to fit Grundy up too easily, but the best scene has an irate Grundy railing against the band representing an ugly future, to which the harassed floor manager points out that means he represents the past.

Anarchy on Thames
Amusingly, a straight doc on what "really" happened, which was notable for infamous EMI publicist Eric Hall shooting down the "Freddie Mercury had toothache" excuse, and also little-heard Simone Santivari saying her $0.02 for once (she can be seen alongside Siouxsie Sioux on the back line). What is seldom touched on is that Lydon clearly rues swearing, but Steve Jones has no such qualms. Grundy could have squashed the former, but not the latter.

Here to be Heard - The Story of the Slits
Punk's premier chicks, the story of how Ari Up, Viv Albertine, Tessa Pollitt and Palmolive became a force to be reckoned with, though Palmolive left before they did their first album, and producer Dennis Bovell got some of their credit. Their 2nd album preceded the demise of the band, as fashion had moved on. Ari and Tessa reformed in 2005 and had good touring times, but Ari sadly died in 2010.

Who Killed Nancy? The True Story...
Some mysterious guy called Michael, apparently, though Sid Vicious remains the official answer, despite general ineptitude seeming to be one of his key characteristics. His friends were convinced that had he lived (and remained at liberty) then he would have been a big success, which remains a sticking point too far for me. But this was an intriguing reworking of the familiar saga.

The South Bank Show Originals: Vivienne Westwood
This 1990 profile saw the over-rated designer talking about her early roots in fashion, and how she met Malcolm MacLaren and together invented the cult of punk rock. As though nobody else at all had been responsible. It was Malcolm who was more behind the use of bondage trousers and changing the Let It Rock shop into Sex. But she remains a darling for some, perhaps for her unorthodox and out-spoken attitudes.

The Culture Show: Girls Will Be Girls
This 2014 effort saw journo Miranda Sawyer use the publication of Viv Albertine's memoir to look at the women who made punk what it was. This meant talking to Viv, two of The Raincoats (who were inspired by The Slits), Gaye Advert, and archive of Poly Styrene, as well as the infamous Jordan, and photographer Sheila Rock. Shows like this are required by law to include Don Letts and Jon Savage, so they had their says too.

The Damned - Don't You Wish That We Were Dead
Lengthy 2014 effort that detailed how the punk pioneers came together, split, reformed, split again, reformed again, and wound up as two ongoing entities: Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible in one, Rat Scabies and Brian James in the other. There were issues, mainly royalties from early albums, and Guns N Roses covering New Rose being other. Dave is reticent, Captain (Ray Burns IRL) is the opposite. Rat and Brian are a bit fed up. The lack of a manager figure to argue their case has left them rather eased out of the usual punk fawning. Don Letts was among the large cast of fans and friends interviewed (Billy Idol and Nick Mason were two of the more surprising inclusions, and welcome for it). Some wanted the band to forget their differences, but the differences ran pretty deep.

Buzzcocks' frontman Pete Shelley has died on a heart attack in Estonia, where he's been living. He was 63. Their greatest hit was Ever Fallen In Love, which will endure for as long as people still listen to music. RIP